The Einstein Cross or Q2237+030

[Grahame (Grahame)]

Hi All,

I have wanted to image this object for quite a while now and finally decided to go for it. Result is good but MUCH better seeing is needed if I am to resolve the actual lensed quasar

The Galaxy of interest is directly in the center of FOV

The quasar is located about 8 billion light years from Earth, while the lensing galaxy is located at a distance of 400 million light years.

First shot is using a willams optics FLT-132 and qhy-9 with 3 x 15min luminance shots
Second shot is using a 10" GSO RC with the qhy-9 also 3 x 15min luminance shots.

Happy with these results for now but will re-visit this in a darker sky position as i have been shooting over the top of Perth for this one.

Cheers,
Grahame.

[Alchemy (Clive)]

Probably pushing it to get much more from the 45 mins.

More time , plus calibration may reveal something.... Who knows.

[Grahame (Grahame)]

Yeah its not really a matter of going "deep" now, just gotta get the resolution to resolve the points of lensing which are all 18 and 19th mag

just need one good night... just one!

Grahame.

[John Hothersall]

Good luck with this one Grahame, it would be something if you could get some shape. Wanted to just get this in the centre of the CCD for ages for a peek.

John.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Lovely work Grahame.

Each and every Galaxy is very crisp and in nice detail.
That loose 'S' shaped Barred Spiral just to the right of centre is a beauty.

Yeah, pity the Cross isn't visible yet, but you'll get it.

[SkyViking (Rolf)]

Brilliant! I've contemplated this one myself but there are trees blocking in that direction for me. Put a barlow in the train and you should be able to squeeze some detail out of the lens/core. Also you may be able to stack lots of short exposures to combat the seeing, just to get a close up of the core.
Well done so far

[Hagar (Doug)]

Nice image but time should make some difference to the final rendition. Look forward to what comes from a dark sky location image.

[Grahame (Grahame)]

So after much thought I have purchased time on two large telescopes online, LightBuckets.com and sierrastars.com
Lightbucket telescope used was LB-0001 and the sierra stars observatory took the other set of data.

Sets of images were as follows in no particular order:
5 x 300sec
5 x 240sec
2 x 180sec
6 x 90sec
15 x 20sec

images were calibrated and stacked in CCD stack, final levels in photoshop.

Still no einstein cross!

the seeing at both sights was approx 2arc sec on the nights of use and its looking like I just need to get that sub-arc sec resolution, no way around it

Grahame.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

applaud your efforts so far...
good luck-hope you crack it soon !

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Nice try Grahame, your original wasn't much lower quality.

Good idea to have a crack with a proffesional observatory though

Try this observatory

Mike

[RobF (Rob)]

Fascinating project Grahame. Seems unlikely you're going to get there with smaller instruments if the light buckets can't see it though. Unless Rolf's suggestion about using fast frames to overcome seeing works.

[multiweb (Marc)]

That looks pretty cool but wouldn't you need a super barlow/powermate and some kind of AO setup to up your image scale and attack this 'a la fred'?

[Grahame (Grahame)]

mmm true, AO is in the works (finally landed in oz) and just waiting on a scope that will be at a focal length of good use for this

there is one other option which i am waiting to hear back on, getting use of a 1.3m scope for a few subs if im lucky.... we'll see

Cheers,
Grahame